Hachijō language

The small group of Hachijō dialects (八丈方言, Hachijō hōgen), natively called Shima Kotoba (島言葉, [ɕima kotoba], "island speech"), depending on classification, either are the most divergent form of Japanese, or comprise a branch of Japonic (alongside mainland Japanese, Northern Ryukyuan, and Southern Ryukyuan). Hachijō is currently spoken on two of the Izu Islands south of Tokyo (Hachijō-jima and the smaller Aogashima) as well as on the Daitō Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, which were settled from Hachijō-jima in the Meiji period. It was also previously spoken on the island of Hachijō-kojima, which is now abandoned. Based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Hachijō may be considered a distinct Japonic language, rather than a dialect of Japanese.

Hachijō is a descendant of Eastern Old Japanese, retaining several unique grammatical and phonetic features recorded in the Azuma-dialect poems of the 8th-century Man'yōshū and the Fudoki of Hitachi Province. Hachijō also has lexical similarities with the dialects of Kyushu and even the Ryukyuan languages; it is not clear if these indicate that the southern Izu islands were settled from that region, if they are loans brought by sailors traveling among the southern islands, or if they might be independent retentions from Old Japanese.

Hachijō is a moribund language with a small and dwindling population of primarily elderly speakers. Since at least 2009, the town of Hachijō has supported efforts to educate its younger generations about the language through primary school classes, karuta games, and Hachijō-language theater productions. Nevertheless, native speakers are estimated to number in the "low hundreds," and younger generations are not learning or using the language at home.